As much as Olivier didn’t believe in the veracity of his family’s fragnted story of how they found their way to Baalphoria and the exact reasons why they left in the first place, Emilia still found it fascinating. A thousand more questions about it rattled through her brain, but she didn’t think Olivier was liable to have the answers; maybe, no one in his family did. That eccentric aunt, perhaps, who had vanished into the northern edges of Baalphoria for unknown reasons when Olivier was still a teen.
Would it be creepy if she used her contacts to track the woman down? Unfortunately, it probably would be, but if she had more information than what Olivier had managed to see in the woman’s journals…
“Emilia?”
Olivier’s voice snapped Emilia back into the present. So part of her brushed against her cataloguing function, urging her to reactivate it so her sleepy brain could actually pay attention to the lawyer while her mind wandered. She was far too tired for that, and doing so… Well, she had another function active that would help to pull her away from bad thoughts—which so often ca for her in the aftermath of her nightmares—and it actually worked better when she wasn’t cataloguing everything happening around her, within her. Hence, she usually turned the cataloguing function off at tis like this, when {Keep the Bad Thoughts as Bay} was running overti.
Luckily, it seed as though Olivier had realized she wasn’t using anything to actively keep track of what was happening around them; between them. Probably, he knew the signs—knew that it was only in rare monts that low- and non-devs could experience the world in a single thought and not a million fragnts of everything in the environnt. Did he see the signs of her floating? Of her mind latching onto each singular thought and not bothering to take in anything else of the world, save the ever present press of his body against hers? His hand scratching along her back and keeping her grounded?
“I’m here,” she told him, taking yet another chance to snuggle closer, closer. If she tried hard enough, perhaps she could bury herself within his warmth and safety. Really, she shouldn’t feel this imdiately safe around soone she barely knew—even if she knew, knew, fucking knew, that Olivier was one of the best people she would ever et. He was sunshine, shining onto the darkness of society—or perhaps it was more than he would be? One day? That seed the sort of fate for him: soone who would dedicate themself to helping everyone who needed it. Olivier was the sort to give soone the clothes he was wearing—the sort to tear his soul to shreds, giving and giving and giving of himself until there was nothing left.
Actually… maybe that wasn’t quite right? But maybe it was?
Emilia wasn’t sure, but she had a feeling that he was both like her—giving to the point of being suicidal, as several people had so rudely, if accurately, put it—and not. More that likely, Olivier would be sensible when he gave… at least, with most people? There was just sothing about him that said that for the right person—for the people lucky enough to consider themselves among his loved ones, perhaps—he would be that giving, but unlike her, he wasn’t likely to give himself away to random strangers.
That wasn’t bad! Emilia knew full well how many problems her own propensity for acting for the good of people she’d only just t had caused. Still, it wasn’t as thought she got herself into involved in anything completely ignorant of potential consequences. While she might have a reputation for doing things without thinking—a well-deserved reputation—Emilia had long ago accepted that everything she did could end with her outed as a non-dev, a slut, her father’s wayward child, or just plain old dead.
Emilia would rather end up dead, trying to help soone, than face their corpse, forever wondering if she could have done more. At the sa ti, she didn’t begrudge the majority of humanity for not being quite so insane; she was fully aware that level of self-sacrifice was a bit bonkers.
“I’m totally here,” Emilia repeated, knowing that at least a minute had passed in silence because Olivier wasn’t stupid. Seriously, if she didn’t know better, she’d think her function had reversed itself and suddenly given him access to her own vitals and ntal state! The man was just too fucking good at reading her! “Your family history is fascinating, even if you don’t really believe it. Thank you for telling .”
“You’re welco,” Olivier said, awkward because what were you even supposed to say when soone thanked you for sharing? “Do you still wish to hear my horror story?”
“Definitely. Gim the horror case-story” Emilia agreed, wondering at what point being excited to hear a terrible story of the past beca perverse. Well… if this story had co over with his ancestors from the Grey Sands, everyone was probably dead anyways. “I once again promise I will try to actually listen and not be a distraction!” It was a promise she made and accidentally broke often. Oddly, despite his general annoyance with her ability to segue and drag people along for the ride in class, Olivier hadn’t seed too bothered by it while they spoke more casually. That shouldn’t have been surprising—it wasn’t like she hadn’t already suspected he was more willing to entertain her mind from their annotations—but today was the first ti she’d experienced it in person: first at dinner, and now here in bed.
Dangerous was what it was; Emilia could see herself becoming addicted to Olivier’s calming presence and ability to both let her mind wander—occasionally even pulling their conversation aside with his own thoughts as well, even if far less often—and drag her back with more ease than most of the people she’d grown up around, save perhaps Taelor.
“As I said, this story cos from those files. It took place at least a few hundred years before Baalphoria began its first attempts to overtake the Grey Sands.”
“Wait. Began as in before its first attempts? Doesn’t that an it had to have happened at least, what? At least a millennium ago?”
“Sothing like that,” Olivier agreed, and wow.
It was rare for docunts to survive that long, what with all the tis wars had led to espionage and information purges—sotis the result of wide-scale attacks that wiped the information from whatever it was being stored on, sotis the result of civil war or governnt corruption. Even the docunts that this story had co from were supposed to be gone, destroyed by Baalphoria as they attempted to control the narrative of the Grey Sands’ past and future. For this story to have survived that and the several hundred years of Baalphoria attempting to take it over beforehand, as well as a short war with the south, all punctuated by Baalphoria’s first attempted takeover, a little over 900 years ago? Amazing.
“Were there many docunts that old in the files? I an, I know you probably don’t know for sure—the whole translation thing—but…?”
Olivier’s chin brushed against her forehead as he shook his head. “I believe there may be a few—I’ve learned how to read dates from comparing the originals to translations—but have neither gone through all the files, nor am I confident in my ability to read anything properly.”
“Fuck, how many docunts are there?”
“A little over a hundred thousand.”
Emilia… had no words. When Olivier had told his story, featuring his ancestor standing amongst boxes of docunts that he had absconded to Baalphoria with, she had definitely pictured a couple dozen boxes—maybe a hundred. These were court cases and other sorts of official docunts they were talking about, and as she knew from both reading Black Knot files and stealing glances at docunts that various governnt employees—including her father—had to read through for work, that shit could be huge.
A few years ago, BJ’s parents had divorced over continued disagreent over how to deal with their son’s behavioural issues—really, they had just disagreed over what sort of boarding school he should be at, the one his father chose not doing its job to bring him in line. BJ had gotten a hold of their final divorce agreent, and the thing had been huge! It had also shown what they’d all already known: both his parents were pieces of shit who really just wanted their son to shut up and behave so they, ideally, would never have to think of him again.
Big shocker that BJ had fucked off the mont he turned thirty and blocked his parents from contacting him—not that Emilia thought they would. From everything she’d heard—mostly from Leerin and Darrian, still stuck in The Penns because their family was rather insufferable and wouldn’t let them leave their sight until they were legally allowed to leave without parental consent—BJ’s parents were living their best life free from each other and their son. BJ’s life, luckily, was also going good, even if he had been forced to get a job at a convenience store in order to support himself and save up for school. He wanted to beco a dic—maybe even a doctor, although everyone thought he’d do better as a dic—and Emilia had no doubt he would have a few people offering to pay for his schooling in a decade, herself included. Quite a few of them had already offered to pay for his gap decade, but BJ had refused; apparently he was actually enjoying working such a low-stakes job.
Seriously, though. If just those divorce docunts would have been a few hundred pages printed, how many pages were over a hundred thousand docunts? How had Olivier’s ancestors even transported all that? Especially while avoiding the Sever… maybe?
“Olivier?”
The man humd, soft and sleepy, his nose turned into her hair and so sweet her heart felt like it might explode. A little part of her said she should let him fade off to sleep, but for as tired as she was, Emilia was still wired with stress and mories and curiosity enough that she would be waking the man up if he dared try to pass out on her. It was easy, therefore, to ask how big the place all the docunts were being stored was.
“It’s a bunker, of sorts,” the man answered, shifting and yawning but never asking that she let him rest. “Offaether and underground. Surrounded by so sort of anti-everything material as well. I’ve heard my mother’s relatives joke that it is the most secure location in Baalphoria. I doubt it is more secure than The Ridge Rind or the Ioz Convention Centre, but I suspect it may be the most secure, privately owned location this side of the Twintides.”
“Really? So, like, unless soone gets inside, the chances of anything being compromised—”
“It is highly unlikely, if not impossible,” Olivier finished, adding that access was restricted to high-ranking mbers of the de la Rue’s direct familial line. “Even my father is not allowed inside, as he is not a blood relative.”
“Wait? Seriously? So he married into your family and basically gave up access to his family’s legacy?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s terrible. Why’d he do that?”
“I do not know,” Olivier admitted, awkwardly adding that he wasn’t very close with either of his parents and doubted his father would tell him, even if he asked. “I believe part of the reason my aunt left is that she disagreed with his decision to marry my mother, let alone to so fully give up those files, although I believe there was so other reason as well—after all, she didn’t leave until decades after they married. As I said earlier, I am unaware of the exact details.”
“Did you know her well? Your aunt?”
Olivier made a considering sound before telling her that no, he hadn’t. “I did like her, though. My mother did not. My aunt was not often welco in our ho. More… she visited when it would be expected for her to be allowed to? Birthdays and other large events where she would be missed. My aunt”—Emilia could hear the smile in her not-quite teacher’s voice—“she was not the sort to take shit from anyone. If she had been actively excluded from an event she should have been welco at… Well, there are people who wouldn’t cause a fuss.”
“Ah yes~ Those people. The ones who can be outright told, ‘I’m going to kick you in the balls’ and not bother to move or complain when they’re kicked in the balls. They might even thank the person! Or make sothing up to make themself look like the one who fucked up! ‘Sorry I got in the way of your foot. Is it okay~?’”
“Indeed. My aunt was not that sort of person; she was like you.”
“Soone who would be snarky, if not outright rude, for being excluded? Especially if the person then lied about the reason why we weren’t there?”
“Yes,” Olivier said, voice filled with more affection than Emilia would have expected as she burst into delighted giggles, her heart squeezing at the reality that Olivier had once liked soone like her, even if only in this small little way.
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